[PLUG] Mailing list issues - Quick vote

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 11:39 AM, Arun Khan <knura9 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just two days ago, my reply to an OP on security certification was
> trapped by a "Suspicious Header" filter.  It took close to 42 hours to
> get moderator approval.   This is after so much discussion on opening
> up this mailing list.

I have been reading this thread for a while. And, not just this
iteration. There are a couple of things which leave me a bit upset.
One, the original email from Sudhanwa left more issues un-addressed
than it did by way of explanation. The exposition was more
(admittedly, paraphrasing) "certain issues compel things to be the way
they are, persons unnamed (due to safety in anonymity) are discussing
and changes may happen". Unfortunately, most of the traffic on the
list subsequently has been about "the issue". The expected nature of
traffic on an UserGroup list is never always limited to "let's dissect
what is wrong with the mailman settings for this list". Because that
approach defines an oddly practised form of tautology.

I've been lurking on this list for a while now. And, while the genesis
of the crisis - lack of traffic - may have been due to settings, the
lack of traffic itself is very upsetting. There could be a number of
reasons for that - specialized groups and forums are available to
discuss everything under the sun, newbies may not be facing any issues
while installation (Paradise Regained - every single piece of new
hardware just works !), or, that there is simply nothing to discuss.
Whatever may the reason be - that should be thought about. On a side
note, this isn't unique - most of the major LUG lists are seeing
dwindling traffic. The difference in this case is that it is sharply
approached zero.

Pune has its flagship event in GNUnify - that the LUG list doesn't see
much activity is probably something of an oddity. I am old school and
while forums like G+ are always welcome (and, I'm happy that
individuals have decided to come together to create the community
page) in terms of outreach and conversations, a mailing list is more
than that. Tooling that measures the vibrancy and activity of
communities still use mailman archives to generate graphs.

--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>